Confederate Family Cemetery

sailorruss

Private
Joined
Aug 30, 2018
Location
Apparently Florida.
I have a friend, Gah must have known him since I was six or seven, the lives down the road from me. Central Florida isn’t glossed over as ‘nothing doing’ in the war. Close though. You gotta dig for it. In this case no pun intended.

My friend doesn’t drive so I was dropping him off at his place and he jerks his thumb to the right. “You love history, right?” He asks; possibly the dumbest question I have heard.

“Nope. Hate it,” I said.

“Make a right,” He said.

I pull on to a small, grated dirt road that I had always assumed was a drive way. We rumble along. It’s not dangerous neighborhood. It is rough though. The railroad goes through there and I live on the ‘wrong side’ of those tracks.

I glance to the right and catch a glimpse of a small cemetery. It’s not over grown, but the place is full of leaves and weeds… and I see a small Confederate flag. I roll up a little more and I can see clearly a private purchase headstone that is of Civil War era.

“Man,” I’m looking, “Who?”

“The people who owned the land that the railroad came through.”

Before I could ask the question he answered it for me. “I think in my backyard there are more of the family,” Quick pause, “and their slaves too.”

He shook his head. “I haven’t been out there with a metal detector myself, but I’m sure you can find quite a few more graves.”



Here is Find a Grave. The pictures seem to be taken at dusk and the yard has a canopy of trees shading it. I can see why the contributor didn’t stop for too long. As I said, it can be rough there. So I have to take a ride down and take some photos for you all. I believe there is a CSN sailor/officer there.

Col. Titus, you might recognize his name from his pro-slavery fighting in Kansas in the 1850s, founded the city north of us, Titusville. His grave was basically lost for a very long time. Recently rediscovered it is kept up, with a fence around it, ETC.

I’m going to go down there and clean the place up as best I can come the first cold snap. I might be able to garner the same interest and maybe we can save it from the bulldozer that will inevitably level it. It’s already happened to place south of here where 20 railroad workers are buried. New development slows for no history here.
 
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